The Official SaaStr Podcast: SaaS | Founders | Investors

Aaref Hilaly is a Partner @ Sequoia Capital, one of the world's most successful VC funds with investments in the likes of Apple, Google, Paypal, Whatsapp and LinkedIn just to name a few. As for Aaref he came to the valley with 2 suitcases and the ambition to start a company. That he did and had 2 companies that were Sequoia backed, first CenterRun and then ClearWell Systems where Aaref was instrumental in the company's growth from 0 to a $100m revenue run rate in just 4 years, prior to their $410m acquisition by Symantec. Today Aaref draws on this incredible operational success to illustrate how to manage up and have a very happy board. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: Why does Aaref advocate for founders not to manage the board but to engage them? How can this be done effectively? What does Aaref state are the dangers of focussing on metrics with your board? Why should you focus on product instead? How does this shift change the dialogue with the board? When things do go wrong and the company misses a quarter, how should the founder react? Why does Aaref suggest that founders need to own the miss? How should they structure these conversations? What should they not do when they miss a quarter? How can founders most effectively put their board to work? How should this be communicated and then followed up on by the founder? Where has Aaref found the board can provide the most value? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Aaref Hilaly

Mark Roberge, former CRO of Hubspot, and Michele Law, former COO of OpenDNS, discuss the dangers of premature growth for startups. They share insights on the right time to focus on growth, assessing core components, and the profile of the first sales hire. The podcast also explores topics such as scaling sales teams, sales compensation plans, and aligning marketing, sales, and customer success.

Todd Olson is the Founder & CEO @ Pendo, the startup that allows you to capture all user behaviour, gather feedback and then provide contextual support. They have raised over $30m in VC funding from some of the very best in the business including Neeraj @ Battery Ventures, Megan @ Spark and Matt @ Salesforce Ventures just to name a few. As for Todd, prior to Pendo he held various different roles in product as well as co-founding 2 prior startups. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: How did Todd make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found Pendo? Why does Todd believe that there is inherent tension between customer success and product teams? How has this changed from sales and marketing team tension? What does Todd suggest to mitigate this tension? How does Todd evaluate his hiring process? At what stage does one become a specialist vs a jack of all trades? Why does Todd always believe that you should hire ahead of where you are? Todd has previously said that 'money is not all the same'. How does Todd look to select his investors? What value adds are most desired for Todd? What do the best investors do that make them so? 60 Second SaaStr What does Todd know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning? What is Todd's favourite SaaS reading material: Mattermark Daily, Tom Tunguz Creating a startup culture for adults? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Todd Olson

Amit Agarwal is the Chief Product Officer @ Datadog, the startup that provides cloud scale monitoring that tracks your dynamic infrastructure and applications. They have raised over $140m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including Index Ventures, IA Ventures, OpenView and RRE just to name a few. As for Amit, before Datadog, Amit was the Director of Product Management at Quest Software (now Dell), where he led the team responsible for application performance monitoring. Previously, Amit held product management roles at Datamirror (now IBM) and Embarcadero Technologies. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: How did Amit make his way into the world of SaaS and come to be Chief Product Officer @ Datadog? Why did Datadog not have a marketing strategy for the early days? What would Amit advise early stage founders with regards to optimising their marketing in the early days? Obviously a multi-product line is crucial for a SaaS startup to be successful, what is Amit's take on how, when and why to launch a second product? What have been his big learnings on this from Datadog? Amit has said before that it is tough to sell to large enterprises in the early days, does that mean startups should always start with SME's? At what price point does it become a challenge? Does Amit agree that if you are between 25K-100K you are in the valley of death price wise? 60 Second SaaStr What does Amit know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning? What is Amit's favourite SaaS reading material? When is the right time to hire a CPO and why? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Amit Agarwal

Tim Eades is the CEO @ at vArmour, the industry's first distributed security system that provides application-aware micro-segmentation. Tim joined vArmour as CEO in October, 2013. Prior to that, he was the CEO at Silver Tail Systems until the company was acquired by RSA, the security division of EMC in late 2012. Prior to leading Silver Tail Systems, Tim was CEO of Everyone.net, an SMB focused SaaS company that was acquired by Proofpoint. Tim has also held sales and marketing executive leadership positions at BEA Systems, Sana Security, Phoenix Technologies and IBM. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: How did Tim make his way from punk rock fan in the UK to leading Silicon Valley CEO? Why does Tim believe Incremental Account Opportunity (IAO) is one of the most important metrics for a growing startup? Why does Tim believe that most founders are far too late to ship their second product? How can they identify adjacent markets? When exactly is the right time to know when to ship your second product? What does it take in terms of sales team structure to successfully orchestrate the 7 figure deals that Tim does? What does that look like in terms of sales team compensation? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Tim Eades

David Rodnitzky is founder and CEO of 3Q Digital, a leading digital agency that was acquired by Harte Hanks in 2015. Prior to 3Q Digital, he held senior marketing roles at several Internet companies, including Rentals.com (2000-2001), FindLaw (2001-2004), Adteractive (2004-2006), and Mercantila (2007-2008). David currently serves on advisory boards for several companies, including Marin Software, MediaBoost, Mediacause, and a stealth travel start-up. Loretta Jones is the vice president of marketing at Delighted, the fastest way to gather customer feedback and put it into the hands of those who can act on it. Prior to Delighted, Loretta's marketing programs grew Insightly, a CRM for small business, from 100,000 users to over 1.2 million users. Prior to Insightly, Loretta worked at Adobe Sign (formerly Adobe EchoSign) and grew the EchoSign brand to $25 million. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: Should all companies invest in SEM? How does SEM differ for SaaS SMB businesses vs enterprise SaaS businesses? How much of a role should iterating and testing play with regards to SEM? What are the strategies that can be used to ensure for maximal dollar efficiency? David has said before that 'no demand channel is an island'. How does SEM work together with the other channels (SEO, display ads etc) to form a cohesive marketing strategy? As LTV takes a considerable time to figure out and can be inaccurate, should startups focus on their CPA (cost per acquisition) more than any other metric? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr David Rodnitzsky

Tom Tunguz is a Partner at Redpoint Ventures and one of the pre-eminent thought leaders in the rise of SaaS. Tom has made investments in the likes of Demio, Axial, Chorus.ai and more incredible companies. Tomasz is also the co-author of Winning with Data: which explores the cultural changes big data brings to business, and shows you how to adapt your organization to leverage data to maximum effect. Before joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google's AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization. If you have not checked out Tom's blog that is a must and can be found here. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: What are the 4 dominant ways startups are incorporating machine learning into their feature set? Why does Tom not believe in AI and discuss prefers to discuss machine learning? What 3 things have caused the rise of machine learning? Why now will machine learning happen in core categories in SaaS? What role does deep learning play in this rise? What are the 5 precepts of the type of companies that Tom wants to invest in using ML in SaaS? Why should startups discuss their value proposition over their technology? How does Tom advise startups can gain access to proprietary datasets? How would Tom like to see data access change in the coming years? How does Tom approach the aspect of building out a team of experts in machine learning for your startup? What should founders look for? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Tomasz Tunguz

Dan Adika is the Founder and CEO @ Walkme, the cloud-based service designed to help professionals guide and engage prospects and customers, and complete online tasks. They have raised over $90m in VC funding from some of the greats of the industry such as Rory O'Driscoll @ Scale Venture Partners and the team at Insight Venture Partners. As for Dan, prior to Walkme, he spent time at HP as a software engineer and before that spent 5 years in The Israeli Army's elite computing unit. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: How did Dan made his way from the elite computing unit of the Israeli army to San Francisco to found Walkme? What does Dan believe are the most important metrics to assess the growth and potential of a SaaS startup? What does Dan believe is a good customer payback period? What does Dan consider a good retention rate? How does Dan calculate sales rep productivity? What metric would suggest a successful rep and at what level should one be concerned? What is the KPI that Dan uses to measure customer success? When is the right time to hear your first CS rep? 60 Second SaaStr What does Dan know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? Fave SaaS reading material? When is the right time for startups to look to acquire other startups? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Dan Adika

Brad Feld is one of the world's leading VCs having Co-Founded Foundry Group, Brad has made investments in the likes of Zynga, Makerbot and Fitbit, just to name a few. Brad is also Co-Founder of Techstars, one of the world's most prominent startup accelerators, whose portfolio companies have raised over $1.3bn in funding. If that wasn't enough Brad is also a best selling author having co-authoured Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and VC and Startup Communities: Building An Entrepreneurial Ecosystem In Your Community. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: How Brad made his way into the world of VC and came to found Foundry Group? Brad has previously stated that companies can be segmented into 3 different core components? What does he mean by this? How can startups be structured internally for scalability? Why does Brad hate the word culture? How should culture be viewed and approach internally within startups? How has Brad seen his personal development with regards to being a board member? What has he got better at? What does he believe makes a great board member? Why is CAC the easiest metric to game in SaaS? How should the CAC/LTV ratio be approached? How can entrepreneurs use this to attract VC investment? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Brad Feld

Dan Burkhart is the Founder & CEO @ Recurly, the startup powering much of the subscription success, trusted by the likes of Twitch, CBS Interactive and Hubspot just to name a few. They have raised over $20m in VC funding from leading investors including Greycroft, Freestyle, Harrison Metal and more. As for Dan, his background spans 14 years with the likes of eBay and NBC Internet in the marketing, business development and strategic partnership realm. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: How did Dan make his way into the world of SaaS and come to found Recurly? How does Dan perceive a good CAC/LTV ratio? Does he agree with the hallowed 3:1 often cited by founders and investors? How does Dan manage and measure customer churn? How does he approach regrettable and non-regrettable customer churn? What is the post-mortem analysis of customer churn? How does Dan insert an element of accountability without creating a sense of churn? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Dan Burkhart